I don't believe those issues are related from the specialisation system itself but rather from the Forms (toggles) giving insane amounts of damage bonus. I have a ranged archery toon who gets 20% dmg bonus to ranged attacks for each stack of concentration wich equals 160% dmg bonus alone. Add supperstat dmg 80% and 55% from Quarry I now have 295%. While investing a lot of offense just to get an extra 40% dmg bonus would be worthless sinds you can instead use severity to multiply that value with your crit severity.
[...]
Here's a fun expiriment to see how much damage bonus you're actually getting out of your form
Step 1: Check a power's damage at 1 stack.
Step 2: Stack to 8 stacks.
Step 3: Check the same power's damage now (make sure no other bonuses are in effect)
You might be surprised just how little damage bonus you're getting per stack...which is because like most of us, you're currently so overloaded with damage bonuses that everything is diminished all to hell by the time it comes to your Form. For me, a 115% damage bonus turns into a wopping 13%. And no, that's not 13% per stack, that's 13% total.
That's another reason folks can afford to just stack Constitution... there's really no need to stack whatever stat your Form scales off of. It's also another reason for the shift in focus to Crit Severity, and why the point made about why sheer damage builds no longer exist is valid.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Here's a fun expiriment to see how much damage bonus you're actually getting out of your form
Step 1: Check a power's damage at 1 stack.
Step 2: Stack to 8 stacks.
Step 3: Check the same power's damage now (make sure no other bonuses are in effect)
You might be surprised just how little damage bonus you're getting per stack...which is because like most of us, you're currently so overloaded with damage bonuses that everything is diminished all to hell by the time it comes to your Form. For me, a 115% damage bonus turns into a wopping 13%. And no, that's not 13% per stack, that's 13% total.
That's another reason folks can afford to just stack Constitution... there's really no need to stack whatever stat your Form scales off of. It's also another reason for the shift in focus to Crit Severity, and why the point made about why sheer damage builds no longer exist is valid.
I think his point is that the forms alone can take damage into DR territory, although IMO something's wrong with the system if it had to institute such steep DR that the numbers are so skewed in the first place.
And yes Con right now is stupidly good. I have no idea why it is not just a survivability stat, but an energy stat with Fuel My Fire and Defiance and Spirit Reverb, a DPS stat with Nimble Mind, and a healing stat with Adrenaline Rush and Resurgence as well. No other stat in the game is a one-stop shop for all your powerbuilding needs like Con is.
Step 3: Check the same power's damage now (make sure no other bonuses are in effect)
You might be surprised just how little damage bonus you're getting per stack...which is because like most of us, you're currently so overloaded with damage bonuses that everything is diminished all to hell by the time it comes to your Form. For me, a 115% damage bonus turns into a wopping 13%. And no, that's not 13% per stack, that's 13% total.
That's another reason folks can afford to just stack Constitution... there's really no need to stack whatever stat your Form scales off of. It's also another reason for the shift in focus to Crit Severity, and why the point made about why sheer damage builds no longer exist is valid.
I know, and thats my whole point!
I'm gonna give you a set exemple with my archery toon
I have exactly :
- Stars : 15%
- Offensive Passive : 90%
- Superstats : 76%
- Offense : 13%
- Ranged Bonus : 29%
Total is 223% bonus base dmg + 100% original dmg = 323% bonus base dmg
I get an Extra 19% form each stack of focus wich gives me 152% bonus base dmg.
So my skills have a (475% base dmg x 1,25) +- returns, so anyways sinds you always take the base ammount of dmg from a skill it is normal the more bonus dmg you get because this value is partialy additive.
For instance, base damage from Snap Shot is 217 -> 271,25 (in Ranged Role)
If I use only my passive abilities (323% base dmg) snap shot should deal 876,1375 dmg but I get 805 dmg. I lost 8,11% of the base value dmg by going so far in DR.
If I now use both passives abilities and toggle (475% base dmg) snap shot should deal 1288,4375 dmg but I get 1002 instead because of heavy DR. I have lost 22,23% of my base dmg value scaling instead of 8,11% when i wasn't using any forms.
This shows that whenever you get past the 350% (includes 100% original value) dmg bonus cap, heavy DR are starting to kick in, while on the contrairy, below that 350% cap you will only have minor DR on your +dmg bonus.
Sinds defensive avatars are more likely not going to be affected by that cap, they will never suffer heavy DR from +dmg bonus, yes there will be minor DR but the dmg bonus value will never scale bellow 90% of the original dmg value of a skill.
Now for the offensive character it is a whole different story, offensive character easely reach the 350% cap the extra 146% of dmg bonus for me only gives me 32% of the actual base value of the skill. Those characters are the one hitted by heavy DR, because of that, defensive builds are superior to offensive builds because they have far more surviability and are getting greater numbers out of +dmg bonus compared to offensive builds, the only thing that matters in this case is the multiplicative value from roles, with an offensive role I get an extra 1.25 multiplicator but this and the extra additional dmg doesn't help when facing people capable of mitigating atleast 80% of the dmg dealt on them.
Finaly, my sugestion, if you change toggles to act like multiplicative values, like Mental Discipline does, offensive roles will get greater benefits from it because they will still easely get close to the 300% base dmg hardcap and not start to get heavy DR on the base dmg values while getting an extra multiplicative value from the toggles that will, this way, create a bigger balanced gap between Damage Dealers and Tanks.
This also means defensive builds won't easely get acces to +dmg value, and offense will becomme a very handy stat for them because it will allow those Tanks, willing to do so, to highly increase their base dmg bonus and this way to make offense "on par" with critical hits + severity depending on the build used.
Be aware that those change would conclude to an average decreased dps for Tanks and an minor decreased dps for Damage dealers. But I fundamentaly believe it is a change worth because PVP would be less about ganking people in a single hit and for PVE this could possibly make fights a bit longer and allow ennemies to actualy do something before they die, there is realy no reason to have 6000dps+ in this game when ennemies already melt down in seconds anyways.
I'm gonna give you a set exemple with my archery toon
I have exactly :
- Stars : 15%
- Offensive Passive : 90%
- Superstats : 76%
- Offense : 13%
Total is 194% bonus base dmg
I get an Extra 19% form each stack of focus wich gives me 152% bonus base dmg.
So my skills have a (446% base dmg x 1,25) +- returns, so anyways sinds you always take the base ammount of dmg from a skill it is normal the more bonus dmg you get because this value is partialy additive.
EDIT : I corrected the values by adding the extra ranged damage bonus I forgot earlier on my calculations. So it should now be OK to take those values into consideration!
The problem comes from the fact that to be an effective ranged character, you don't even have to bother with Ego, meaning you can be ranged and take strength, and get all the benefits that were intended for melee characters (high damage + high defense, because they have to close distance in pvp and have to stand close to the danger in pve) along with the benefits of being ranged ( don't have to close distance, don't have to stand close to danger). That's why there needs to be some sort of meaningful range/melee seperation... it can't really be done with the defense ( ranged defense? melee defense? who gets more of what? ) so the next logical thing to look at is severity, especially when you consider the impact that severity has on the game in both pvp and pve. If you were to just buff Ego up to give the same benefits as Strength, then you may have made Ego a viable choice, but at the same time you've made Melee an even worse choice.[/FONT][/COLOR]
Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me. Your position is much clearer now.
Basically, you are saying that if a character focuses on their constitution, then the survivability benefit they would obtain from juggernaut is significant enough to dwarf the benefit from any possible alternative. I have to try this out one day.
This alone would be bad, but the problem is compounded due to the fact that this tree also gives one of the better (or possibly the best) crit severity options. Due to diminishing returns to energy gain and damage, plus the availability crit strike enhancing gear, crit severity is now an optimal advantage to seek. I don't really know a lot about this, so unless someone more knowledgeable says otherwise, I'll take your word that this is all true.
Also, I thought that was an interesting thought you raised at the end. They need to make the strength tree optimal for most melee builds, but not as good for ranged builds as, say, the ego tree. But how do you do that without increasing the usefulness gap between ranged and melee?
Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me. Your position is much clearer now.
Basically, you are saying that if a character focuses on their constitution, then the survivability benefit they would obtain from juggernaut is significant enough to dwarf the benefit from any possible alternative. I have to try this out one day.
This alone would be bad, but the problem is compounded due to the fact that this tree also gives one of the better (or possibly the best) crit severity options. Due to diminishing returns to energy gain and damage, plus the availability crit strike enhancing gear, crit severity is now an optimal advantage to seek. I don't really know a lot about this, so unless someone more knowledgeable says otherwise, I'll take your word that this is all true.
Also, I thought that was an interesting thought you raised at the end. They need to make the strength tree optimal for most melee builds, but not as good for ranged builds as, say, the ego tree. But how do you do that without increasing the usefulness gap between ranged and melee?
It's not completely true. Based on the numbers provided in this thread, it looks like the OP is running AoPM, due to the claim that they can get 80% Damage Resistance from Defense and still get a 13% bonus from Form despite stacking Constitution, which does not scale with any Form.
This means apart from Primary Strength and Secondary Constitution, Smoochan's third superstat is very likely Intelligence, sitting at 340-350, since none of the other forms will give the 14% to ranged damage per stack necessary to hit 115% at 8 stacks. Doing some math, that would likely mean 410-420 Con, 190-200 Strength and 80-90 on the other stats.
Note that in the scenarios I listed in my previous post, none of them mentioned AoPM for a few reasons.
At 80-90 Ego, the gap between non-SS Ego Ranged Damage and a hypothetical primary SS Ego Ranged Damage with Ego at 190-200 is negligible.
At the same time, even without Energy Surge spam, AoPM and secondary Int make energy management a non-factor, negating Ego's Insight advantage.
Third, due to the nature of AoPM buffing stats, spec trees that give scaling bonuses based on stats will enjoy a relative advantage over other spec trees.
In other words, the gap between the Ego tree and the Strength tree is smallest on an AoPM build.
But even then, it is difficult to argue for Strength as a clear winner. Now that I have a clearer idea of the context, I also know the conditions necessary to make Ego come out ahead.
Since Ego's Insight spec covers Cost Discount and Ego powers Concentration, energy management is covered and Secondary Int is not necessary for an Ego character. Int and Insight have diminishing returns when stacked anyway, which led to the earlier claim of Insight being worthless - it is, but only on the wrong build Could even throw in an Ego unlock like Killer Instinct for good measure. The FotM is Two-Gun Mojo anyway.
So the third stat is freed up for Secondary Dex. Stack that with Sixth Sense and use a Piercing primary offense to raise Crit Severity. This should narrow the gap between Crit Severity to 111% on Ego vs 120% on Strength, but the Ego character will have almost 49% crit chance with the Q secs or 55% with Vindicator, while the Strength character has 37% with a purple 47 crit sec, or 43% with Vindicator. Multiplying crit chance by crit multiplier to get relative DPS increase over no crits, we have:
Ego: 111% x 55% = 61.05%
Str: 120% x 43% = 51.6%
So the Ego character does more DPS.
Side note, the Strength character does not have the option of taking a Piercing primary, because most of its Crit comes from Crit Strike instead of Dex, and losing that Crit Strike will kill its Crit Chance.
Another note, at 55% Crit Chance, Exploit Opening will give more DPS than Sixth Sense, but the calculations involved are complicated enough for another thread, so I used Sixth Sense for simplicity's sake.
Last note, Crit Severity is nice, but because of the nature of the formula Crit Chance x Crit Severity, as well as the relatively smaller Crit Chance values vs Crit Severity, 1% Crit Chance is marginally more valuable than 1% Crit Severity. The exact value depends on your character's existing Crit% and Severity though.
I mentioned Q secs for the Ego build, because Force of Will will take Defense to well over 60%, which, stacked with the Armadillo secondaries, will beat the Strength build's 80% resistance cleanly. Strength does not have this option because it needs to pump everything into its secondary stats, which Armadillo provides little of.
As for stats, the Ego build should get 430-440 Con, 310-320 Dex, 230-240 Ego and 80-90 on the other stats. Slightly higher than the Str build because Ego Mastery gives more stats.
Comparing the two builds side by side, Str/Con/Int AoPM with purple secs wins in Knock Resist, ~200HP and Cooldown speed while Ego/Con/Dex AoPM with Armadillo secs wins in raw DPS by a healthy margin and damage mitigated by a smaller margin
It's not completely true. Based on the numbers provided in this thread, it looks like the OP is running AoPM, due to the claim that they can get 80% Damage Resistance from Defense and still get a 13% bonus from Form despite stacking Constitution, which does not scale with any Form.
This means apart from Primary Strength and Secondary Constitution, Smoochan's third superstat is very likely Intelligence, sitting at 340-350, since none of the other forms will give the 14% to ranged damage per stack necessary to hit 115% at 8 stacks. Doing some math, that would likely mean 410-420 Con, 190-200 Strength and 80-90 on the other stats.
No actually, all the numbers I gave are without AoPM. Now that you know that, take the numbers I gave, and throw AoPM on top of that.
At 80-90 Ego, the gap between non-SS Ego Ranged Damage and a hypothetical primary SS Ego Ranged Damage with Ego at 190-200 is negligible.
At the same time, even without Energy Surge spam, AoPM and secondary Int make energy management a non-factor, negating Ego's Insight advantage.
Third, due to the nature of AoPM buffing stats, spec trees that give scaling bonuses based on stats will enjoy a relative advantage over other spec trees.
In other words, the gap between the Ego tree and the Strength tree is smallest on an AoPM build.
I'm glad we agree on all these things. AoPM does in fact make the whole problem worse, but it's only a symptom, not the cause (keep in mind, the numbers I gave were without AoPM). Primary stat Strength is what allows AoPM to do what it currently does for ranged characters.
But even then, it is difficult to argue for Strength as a clear winner. Now that I have a clearer idea of the context, I also know the conditions necessary to make Ego come out ahead.
Since Ego's Insight spec covers Cost Discount and Ego powers Concentration, energy management is covered and Secondary Int is not necessary for an Ego character. Int and Insight have diminishing returns when stacked anyway, which led to the earlier claim of Insight being worthless - it is, but only on the wrong build Could even throw in an Ego unlock like Killer Instinct for good measure. The FotM is Two-Gun Mojo anyway.
the Cost Discount spec is meaningless because energy generation isn't an issue. My 2GM character doesn't have the discount, and just uses Killer Instinct, and literally generates energy faster than I can use it. Taking Insight will not give an Ego-spec character anything over what a strength spec character has.
So the third stat is freed up for Secondary Dex. Stack that with Sixth Sense and use a Piercing primary offense to raise Crit Severity. This should narrow the gap between Crit Severity to 111% on Ego vs 120% on Strength, but the Ego character will have almost 49% crit chance with the Q secs or 55% with Vindicator, while the Strength character has 37% with a purple 47 crit sec, or 43% with Vindicator. Multiplying crit chance by crit multiplier to get relative DPS increase over no crits, we have:
Ego: 111% x 55% = 61.05%
Str: 120% x 43% = 51.6%
So the Ego character does more DPS.
10% more dps is your reward for using a ranged stat on a ranged character. Does that seem okay to you? (don't answer until you read the next part)
Side note, the Strength character does not have the option of taking a Piercing primary, because most of its Crit comes from Crit Strike instead of Dex, and losing that Crit Strike will kill its Crit Chance.
Another note, at 55% Crit Chance, Exploit Opening will give more DPS than Sixth Sense, but the calculations involved are complicated enough for another thread, so I used Sixth Sense for simplicity's sake.
It's simple enough to explain. Crit is easy enough to get from gear, and so crit chance specs just aren't as good as crit severity specs. Not sure why that's complicated enough that it had to muddy up the issue by using a less than optimal spec choice to prove an optimal conclusion. Doing this skews your numbers by a fair margin, and it almost makes it seem like you did that purposefully. Once we take that extra, unrealistic, amount of crit chance out of the equation, what happens here:
Ego: 111% x 55% = 61.05%
Str: 120% x 43% = 51.6%
Is that 10% extra dps still there once you adjust the numbers?
I mentioned Q secs for the Ego build, because Force of Will will take Defense to well over 60%, which, stacked with the Armadillo secondaries, will beat the Strength build's 80% resistance cleanly. Strength does not have this option because it needs to pump everything into its secondary stats, which Armadillo provides little of.
Again... "you have to stack con" is a demand without a drawback. The fact that another spec is going to have to farm for gear to make up the difference is telling enough on its own. Far as I remember, those Armadillo pieces give a 25% bonus... before cryptic math 60+25=85, but after cryptic math it's a different story. So, other specs have to farm for gear to almost make up the difference. Further, this only helps the concept that to build choices are being restricted when even gear becomes involved.
As for stats, the Ego build should get 430-440 Con, 310-320 Dex, 230-240 Ego and 80-90 on the other stats. Slightly higher than the Str build because Ego Mastery gives more stats.
Comparing the two builds side by side, Str/Con/Int AoPM with purple secs wins in Knock Resist, ~200HP and Cooldown speed while Ego/Con/Dex AoPM with Armadillo secs wins in raw DPS by a healthy margin and damage mitigated by a smaller margin
Your numbers are a bit skewed because of reasons I gave above, so these "margins" you're speaking of aren't accurate.
If all this were true, then you would have to explain why the number-crunching-maniacs who do all these calculations and make sure all their numbers are right and then prove their results in practice all end up using primary strength with their ranged aopm builds.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
No actually, all the numbers I gave are without AoPM. Now that you know that, take the numbers I gave, and throw AoPM on top of that.
the Cost Discount spec is meaningless because energy generation isn't an issue. My 2GM character doesn't have the discount, and just uses Killer Instinct, and literally generates energy faster than I can use it.
It's simple enough to explain. Crit is easy enough to get from gear, and so crit chance specs just aren't as good as crit severity specs. Not sure why that's complicated enough that it had to muddy up the issue by using a less than optimal spec choice to prove an optimal conclusion. Doing this skews your numbers by a fair margin, and it almost makes it seem like you did that purposefully. Once we take that extra, unrealistic, amount of crit chance out of the equation, what happens here:
Again... "you have to stack con" is a demand without a drawback. The fact that another spec is going to have to farm for gear to make up the difference is telling enough on its own. Far as I remember, those Armadillo pieces give a 25% bonus... before cryptic math 60+25=85, but after cryptic math it's a different story. So, other specs have to farm for gear to almost make up the difference. Further, this only helps the concept that to build choices are being restricted when even gear becomes involved.
We really have deviated from Smoochan's original topic, but to be honest, I'm finding this discussion on builds to be far more fascinating.
Maybe you could make it easier for us to understand and appreciate you build by telling us your third super stat, your passive, your form (if any).
Also, could you please clarify your point about 'Crit is easy enough to get from gear, and so crit chance specs just aren't as good as crit severity specs.... Doing this skews your numbers by a fair margin... take that extra, unrealistic, amount of crit chance out of the equation? (Note: I don't know how to insert multiple quotes, so I am forced to do it like this.)
First, could you explain why you believe that Selphea's build contains 'extra, unrealistic amount of crit chance'?
Do you believe that Selphea's estimation if flawed? If so, have you taken into how how sixth sense increases your crit chance - not your crit chance rating. As such, the bonus it provides is completely independent of dexterity and mods and does not suffer the usual diminishing returns. On my level 33 toon, it provides me with a 9% or 10% bonus to crit chance. (However, I have q gear, AoPM and have 3 ranks in it, so this number is unusually high.)
Alternatively, are arguing that Selphea's build would be superior if 5 points had been invested into increasing crit severity via follow through and exploit opening and the primary utility slot used to increase crit chance? Remember that Selphea's build uses dex as the third superstat, so crit chance rating items are probably going to suffer from hideous diminishing returns. If this is true, then shouldn't the DPS of ego be even higher?
Finally, yes the fact that you need Armadillo gear to (nearly) match juggernaut is a drawback. There is no getting around that. However, I would like to point out that this from the 11k/piece set. I can buy the full set of 6 for 300 - 400 zen, so a gold player doesn't necessarily have to farm for it. In fact, I've personally taken a likening to q gear, so for me, that would be as minor drawback as taking constitution as superstat is for you. (I been told that the nemesis heirloom gear is better, but haven't obtain enough tokens to check it out.)
No actually, all the numbers I gave are without AoPM. Now that you know that, take the numbers I gave, and throw AoPM on top of that.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you cannot hit 80% def with Juggernaut and 14% per Form stack without AoPM. Here's how I arrived at the breakdown:
14% per stack means secondary Int and a target of 340-350, so:
15 Base + Innate
18 Talents
40 Secondary SS
74 Secondaries
124 2 Rank 7 Int mods
70 AoPM = 341 Int
And 80% def with Juggernaut means everything else went to Con, so:
15 Base + Innate
18 Talents
40 Secondary SS
20 Secondaries
248 4 Rank 7 Con mods
70 AoPM = 411 Con
The only way for this to not hold true is if you were stacking Defense on your primary defense gear instead of Dodge/Avoid, which means more mods went to Int than Con. That means the contribution from Juggernaut is actually less impressive that you're leading us to believe, because it would actually be your gear giving you that Defense. In which case you're the one making sub-optimal choices.
I'm glad we agree on all these things. AoPM does in fact make the whole problem worse, but it's only a symptom, not the cause (keep in mind, the numbers I gave were without AoPM). Primary stat Strength is what allows AoPM to do what it currently does for ranged characters.
I regard AoPM and Quarry as very broken passives post-On Alert. I don't think of the devs did a test scenario to compare the effects of stats with specs versus direct % boosting passives. The only thing keeping the DPS of direct % boosting passives competent is the option to run in DPS role instead of Hybrid, and that's by a very small margin. Quarry on the other hand is far and away the highest DPS passive for a ranged physical build, along with the one with the best defense due to its 18% dodge being a flat boost to dodge rather than dodge rating.
the Cost Discount spec is meaningless because energy generation isn't an issue. My 2GM character doesn't have the discount, and just uses Killer Instinct, and literally generates energy faster than I can use it. Taking Insight will not give an Ego-spec character anything over what a strength spec character has.
From my experience, it's not the main attack that gives me trouble, it's popping the extra cooldowns and debuffs between maintains to raise DPS, like throwing Dust Devil or Force Det between 2GMs.
10% more dps is your reward for using a ranged stat on a ranged character. Does that seem okay to you? (don't answer until you read the next part)
It's simple enough to explain. Crit is easy enough to get from gear, and so crit chance specs just aren't as good as crit severity specs. Not sure why that's complicated enough that it had to muddy up the issue by using a less than optimal spec choice to prove an optimal conclusion. Doing this skews your numbers by a fair margin, and it almost makes it seem like you did that purposefully. Once we take that extra, unrealistic, amount of crit chance out of the equation, what happens here:
Ego: 111% x 55% = 61.05%
Str: 120% x 43% = 51.6%
Is that 10% extra dps still there once you adjust the numbers?
The gap increases even further. I arrived at those numbers for Ego by taking 3 ranks of Follow Through (Crit Severity) for 100% base Severity and 2 Ranks of Sixth Sense for 7.5% Crit Chance. Then I added another 11% Severity from the Severity primary.
Since the spec choice in the Ego tree is your only contention, I'll do calculations for 3 ranks of Follow Through and 2 ranks of Exploit Opening for a definitive comparison:
Crit Chance x Crit Severity + Chance to not crit next hit x 30% Severity
= (47.5% + 111%) + (52.5% x 30% x 111%)
= 52% + 17.4825%
= 69.48%
So the difference is 17.88% with optimal specs on Ego. Since you didn't correct numbers on the Strength calculation, I'm going to assume my original numbers on that were correct.
Again... "you have to stack con" is a demand without a drawback. The fact that another spec is going to have to farm for gear to make up the difference is telling enough on its own. Far as I remember, those Armadillo pieces give a 25% bonus... before cryptic math 60+25=85, but after cryptic math it's a different story. So, other specs have to farm for gear to almost make up the difference. Further, this only helps the concept that to build choices are being restricted when even gear becomes involved.
The point is that other specs have the liberty to stack Con as well, and 85% > 80%, no matter if it's before or after Cryptic Math. Armadillo farming would be a legitimate point of contention, except it's only a 2-hour farm for arguably best-in-slot gear.
Your numbers are a bit skewed because of reasons I gave above, so these "margins" you're speaking of aren't accurate.
If all this were true, then you would have to explain why the number-crunching-maniacs who do all these calculations and make sure all their numbers are right and then prove their results in practice all end up using primary strength with their ranged aopm builds.
Primary Strength with AoPM is better for PvP due to the knock resist, but unless Cryptic regards PvP as more than a non-factor in this game, I'm going to regard PvP as a non-factor myself. Now, unless a "number-crunching-maniac" shows up here to prove me wrong, I personally have seen two ranged AoPM characters, and they both use primary Ego.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you cannot hit 80% def with Juggernaut and 14% per Form stack without AoPM. Here's how I arrived at the breakdown:
Ah, I see the issue now, you think I have both that amount of defense, and that amount of damage bonus per stack. No, the 14% amount is when I heavily stack strength. It was done to illustrate the fact that if I go from very low strength to very high strength, the difference is somewhere around 5% more damage. That's not per stack by the way, that's the total difference at 8 stacks.
You're making a lot of assumptions about the type of character I play, and I assure you that the image you have in your head is way off. My suggestion would be to not focus on what I play... I'm not the only person playing this game after all, and this issue isn't something that only affects me.
Primary Strength with AoPM is better for PvP due to the knock resist, but unless Cryptic regards PvP as more than a non-factor in this game, I'm going to regard PvP as a non-factor myself. Now, unless a "number-crunching-maniac" shows up here to prove me wrong, I personally have seen two ranged AoPM characters, and they both use primary Ego.
I guess my vision of the game just extends further than yours. That's fine, but if you're going to purposely ignore entire portions of the game and only go by what builds you've personally seen, you can't really claim to be informed or open-minded. Lots of people use lots of different builds, that in itself doesn't prove there isn't a problem, it just means that there are many people experiencing the problem.
The point is that other specs have the liberty to stack Con as well, and 85% > 80%, no matter if it's before or after Cryptic Math. Armadillo farming would be a legitimate point of contention, except it's only a 2-hour farm for arguably best-in-slot gear.
Actually it does matter... because of the two defense values you're adding together, one is before cryptic math, and one is after. You can't go by the sum of those two numbers, because it's not the number that is actually in play in the game.
And yes, other specs may also stack constitution, but the reality is they won't even be getting half the benefit they would with Strength spec. This would be okay, since ranged builds shouldn't have access to the same defense+offense benefits that melee have access to... but it's not, because they do.
So the difference is 17.88% with optimal specs on Ego. Since you didn't correct numbers on the Strength calculation, I'm going to assume my original numbers on that were correct.
They weren't correct, you're mistaken for assuming that.
I regard AoPM and Quarry as very broken passives post-On Alert. I don't think of the devs did a test scenario to compare the effects of stats with specs versus direct % boosting passives. The only thing keeping the DPS of direct % boosting passives competent is the option to run in DPS role instead of Hybrid, and that's by a very small margin. Quarry on the other hand is far and away the highest DPS passive for a ranged physical build, along with the one with the best defense due to its 18% dodge being a flat boost to dodge rather than dodge rating.
Again, the effects of passives are a symptom, not the cause.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Ah, I see the issue now, you think I have both that amount of defense, and that amount of damage bonus per stack. No, the 14% amount is when I heavily stack strength. It was done to illustrate the fact that if I go from very low strength to very high strength, the difference is somewhere around 5% more damage. That's not per stack by the way, that's the total difference at 8 stacks.
That's because only half of it goes to ranged damage. There's no ranged Form that scales with strength.
You're making a lot of assumptions about the type of character I play, and I assure you that the image you have in your head is way off. My suggestion would be to not focus on what I play... I'm not the only person playing this game after all, and this issue isn't something that only affects me.
I'm not so much making assumptions as I am trying to find a best-case scenario for Str-based ranged dps. If you feel I am not giving Str-based ranged dps a fair representation, why don't you show us how to build a Str-based ranged character?
I guess my vision of the game just extends further than yours. That's fine, but if you're going to purposely ignore entire portions of the game and only go by what builds you've personally seen, you can't really claim to be informed or open-minded. Lots of people use lots of different builds, that in itself doesn't prove there isn't a problem, it just means that there are many people experiencing the problem.
As far as measuring build performance goes, I disregard portions of the game that do not serve a practical purpose. If PvP does not give rewards, then it is very difficult to justify PvP as a building goal for any reason other than personal enjoyment.
You can take CC and NTTG, Superstat for perception and knock resist, that's well and good, but it comes at the expense of what the game rewards you for, i.e. PvE. I make a lot of build choices for personal reasons myself, but I know full well these choices deviate from what the game tries to orient players towards, so I exclude them in debates about build performance.
That said, if you want to talk about a PvP context, you should state upfront that Strength tree with AoPM is overperforming for PvP, so that we get a better idea of where you're coming from and where this should be going.
Actually it does matter... because of the two defense values you're adding together, one is before cryptic math, and one is after. You can't go by the sum of those two numbers, because it's not the number that is actually in play in the game.
60% + 25% with Armadillo is before Cryptic Math.
The 80% you provided is also before Cryptic Math, based on your earlier post on page 5:
I'm not so much making assumptions as I am trying to find a best-case scenario for Str-based ranged dps. If you feel I am not giving Str-based ranged dps a fair representation, why don't you show us how to build a Str-based ranged character?
Result:
100%+ crit severity
30%+ crit chance
80%+ defense
12k+ hit points
enough offense that the damage bonus from Concentration is already heavily diminished, meaning you don't have to stack Int.
There's no big mystery to it. The above numbers don't account for a passive... so go ahead and throw aopm or quarry on top of that and see what happens.
As far as measuring build performance goes, I disregard portions of the game that do not serve a practical purpose. If PvP does not give rewards, then it is very difficult to justify PvP as a building goal for any reason other than personal enjoyment.
You can take CC and NTTG, Superstat for perception and knock resist, that's well and good, but it comes at the expense of what the game rewards you for, i.e. PvE. I make a lot of build choices for personal reasons myself, but I know full well these choices deviate from what the game tries to orient players towards, so I exclude them in debates about build performance.
That said, if you want to talk about a PvP context, you should state upfront that Strength tree with AoPM is overperforming for PvP, so that we get a better idea of where you're coming from and where this should be going.
So what if I then said that PvE doesn't matter because it's all stupidly easy anyway and there aren't any real rewards other than Z-store fluff?
fyi, the point I'm making here is you choosing not to acknowledge pvp as a meaningful part of the game is itself a meaningless point to make; you're not the only person playing this game.
I'm talking about Strength spec, as well as the passives that it causes to become too powerful, and the ways that it changes the dynamic of the game and sets requirements in place that shouldn't exist, in both the pve and pvp context, because I acknowledge both parts of the game as valid.
The 80% you provided is also before Cryptic Math, based on your earlier post on page 5:
So they're both before Cryptic Math. 85% is greater than 80% before Cryptic Math. After Cryptic Math it will not be 5%, but it will still be more.
Fair enough. The problem is, that armadillo gear doesn't require you to take ego as a superstat, meaning it can't actually be counted as part of the build. The str spec could also equip those pieces of gear, so if you're going to add it to the ego spec's damage resistance, you have to add it to the str spec's as well.
That much I agree with, but Crit Severity is also a symptom. IMO the root of the problem is Cryptic Math.
Not really sure where you're going with this... cryptic math is essentially diminishing returns. Are you saying they should remove diminishing returns? That would require rebalancing the entire system from the ground up...and in the end, nothing would really change. I don't think such a "sweep of the hand" approach is the way to go; better to make a few precise changes.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
The problem is, that armadillo gear doesn't require you to take ego as a superstat, meaning it can't actually be counted as part of the build. The str spec could also equip those pieces of gear, so if you're going to add it to the ego spec's damage resistance, you have to add it to the str spec's as well.
Sure, any strength build could take armadilo - the question is whether your strength build would benefit from doing so.
You seem to have made it quite clear that stacking con is very important for your build. Armadilo armour provides a bonus to your primary superstat and about half of that to each of your secondary stats. Its great if you want balanced stats - as is desirable for the ego build - but less so if you want to pump a single secondary superstat. Is your ranged build still viable with this armou? (Note - this really is a question. I really don't know if your answer will be yes or no here.)
After a lot of PTS copying and Con V mods being sacrificed for the greater good, here's a comparison of Str vs Ego AoPM using Heroic Gear and Rank 5 mods. The Crit Chance primary was used for the Strength build and the Crit Severity primary for the Ego build. I used the Avoidance Primary Def for both builds.
Notes:
EO means Exploit Opening. I dropped the Sixth Sense case after it was clear it would never catch up to EO.
2GM + DD means 2 Gun Mojo with Dust Devil
The results are quite surprising in some respects.
First, Strength Crit Severity was a lot lower than I expected. Turns out the test character I used to get estimates for Strength earlier was using a Severity primary which threw my earlier numbers off.
Second, even at 34.3% base crit chance and almost everything pumped into Secondary stats, it was still more worthwhile to capitalize on Severity on the Ego build with a Severity primary and Exploit Opening for the most DPS. With Strength though, a Severity primary dropped DPS by a lot.
Third, I half expected the results of Ego with Armadillo vs Strength with purples, but I wasn't expecting the results with Strength wearing Armadillo gear. It does surprisingly well; gets 13.48% less DPS, but takes 12.86% less damage. That's almost on par with Ego, just with different orientations. It looks like the game does give you choices after all, just not quite in the expected way.
Ultimately, it doesn't change my initial assessment that the Strength build works better for PvP and Ego for PvE. 12.7k HP and 83% resistance is plenty survivable and the extra DPS gets things done faster. After it was clarified that 80% resistance was before AoPM, I knew Ego would fall behind in Damage Resistance, even with Armadillo. But I also didn't know it would pull so far ahead in DPS.
These results will likely change in favor of Strength when Legion gear and R7-9 mods are taken into account. I think it's still too close to call, because while Ego will fall further behind in resistance, its 13.48% DPS advantage is largely based on crits. This would apply to crittable heals like the ever-popular Conviction too. So defensively, as long as it can heal, it will be able to keep up.
Now for what I mean by Cryptic Math being the problem, I'm saying that because I have a very strong hunch that even the devs get confused by it. It's not just diminishing returns, but a complete lack of uniformity in the application of DR. Some things give a flat bonus. Some things give a Cryptic Math percentage before it gets translated into a flat bonus. Yet other things give a rating subject to DR that gets translated to Cryptic Math percentage that then gets translated into the final bonus, by which point it has diminished into nothing.
Offense is one such stat. Look at the secondary gear. A crit Secondary Offense gives 17 Offense and 47 Crit Strike. An offensive Secondary Offense gives 25 Offense. So 8 Offense = 47 Crit Strike? 8 Offense is nowhere near even 1% actual damage.
And then we have Way of the Warrior and Quarry. Way of the Warrior gives Dodge Rating and Avoidance Rating, which are subject to DR. Quarry gives flat Dodge and Avoidance. Sure, Way of the Warrior gives more damage, but that damage is also subject to DR. After accounting for DR, that advantage is almost negligible.
So we get a game of hunting for what is not subject to DR, or subject to less DR. Even though there's so many powers and gear and spec choices in the game, builds get railroaded into a very narrow range of options because everything else leads to a dead end. Separating Crit Severity would actually make this worse, because right now there is a semblance of choice between Str and Ego. In fact, there are melee builds that use Primary Ego too, to maximize crit chance for landing crit Gas Pellets. I personally don't have any characters using Primary Ego right now though.
even at 34.3% base crit chance and almost everything pumped into Secondary stats, it was still more worthwhile to capitalize on Severity on the Ego build with a Severity primary and Exploit Opening for the most DPS.
I half expected the results of Ego with Armadillo vs Strength with purples, but I wasn't expecting the results with Strength wearing Armadillo gear. It does surprisingly well; gets 13.48% less DPS, but takes 12.86% less damage. That's almost on par with Ego, just with different orientations. It looks like the game does give you choices after all, just not quite in the expected way.
Wow, those are some interesting findings! Thank you for doing this.
Given that sixth sense is based on your secondary superstats, I would have assumed that would have been best, no question, especially with a crit rate in the mid-30s. I going to have to think about taking exploit opening more.
I think that you've shown that you can make a ranged ego build competitive with a ranged strength build. At the same time however, you have also shown that strength - which is clearly designed for melee - can be as competitive an option for ranged characters as the ranged tree option! Still, at least I know that if I have a melee character, I can design it so that it doesn't suck at ranged. This has all been very enlightening.
Wow, those are some interesting findings! Thank you for doing this.
Given that sixth sense is based on your secondary superstats, I would have assumed that would have been best, no question, especially with a crit rate in the mid-30s. I going to have to think about taking exploit opening more.
I think that you've shown that you can make a ranged ego build competitive with a ranged strength build. At the same time however, you have also shown that strength - which is clearly designed for melee - can be as competitive an option for ranged characters as the ranged tree option! Still, at least I know that if I have a melee character, I can design it so that it doesn't suck at ranged. This has all been very enlightening.
Actually when I did my Exploit Opening calculator, I realized I missed out a crit chance multiplier in there. Instead of calculating Exploit Opening only for non-crits after a crit, it was calculating for all non-crits. But I'll wait to see if my calculator works before I look at this again, because I don't want to do manual calculations a second time. In the meantime, you can help me test it at http://worldsojourner.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/champions-online-exploit-opening-calculator-beta/
Well done. Now make an Ego build for a melee character. Since it's okay that ranged characters can benefit so massively from strength, it should work the other way around too, right?
I'd also be interested to see you test your ego build against the standard strength/aopm setup in pvp, and see afterwards if you still feel as viable as your spreadsheet says you should be.
Then do it as a melee.
I'll give you one thing... you're willing to take on the role of someone who thinks the game is well balanced, and that shows guts.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Why do you guys need to do so much calculation? :P
Anyway, I think critical severity is fine the way it is. Uncapping offense would be overpowered. Some of you guys have nukes and you want more power! hehe
I do wish some of the experts in this thread would stop wasting their time trying to prove my idea wrong, and instead post their own ideas that they know are clearly better...
All ears here...anything?
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
I do wish some of the experts in this thread would stop wasting their time trying to prove my idea wrong, and instead post their own ideas that they know are clearly better...
All ears here...anything?
Just think of what happens if you really change how severity works.
Take a deep breath, stay calm, then eventually start posting.
I see people comparing offense to severity... i mean hello? offense is
the 4th super stat, nothing even close being compared to severity, at all.
Then all the blubb-blubb about ranged attacks gaining dmg from strength
as their ss...
The real problem is not a silly stat such as severity... Incompetent players, who
cannot adapt their own playstyle to new game mechanics are.
Once again, what is your problem at all? Pop some screenies, or maybe a video.
Oh aaaand about my burns, i cannot shave them since i am bald at the moment. :eek:
I do wish some of the experts in this thread would stop wasting their time trying to prove my idea wrong, and instead post their own ideas that they know are clearly better...
Seperate Crit Severity into Ranged Crit Severity and Melee Crit Severity.
Have Strength Spec only give melee crit severity, and ego Spec only give ranged crit severity. Dexterity can continue to give both, just less.
Just a thought.
People have nicely, at least most of them, explained to you why they think your idea sucks, and I also believe so. Because it would ask a lot of the devs time to actualy make those changes in game. By changing that particular variable you basicaly ask to have 3 new types of critical severity stats in game instead of 1. You are overcomplicating things while you could just keep it simple and change other things that are easier to fix.
I also posted an idea, and you took me like a 6 year old child who never did any caclulation in his life and completely ignored the post that followed later on. I have a question for you: Have you ever tried an ID blade offensive build by alternating both Mental Discipline and one of the current forms? You would be surprised to see how close those are in DPS.
Also part of your argumentation was that offense was not strong enough. My idea make sure offense actualy do something instead of beeing an extra number affected by heavy DR. Ok, maybe it still doesn't put on par offense with crit severity yet but still it is one step closer to balance the whole thing and it is an easier change to make, copy past Mental Discipline, change the damage type variable and its special synergy and "voila!" you get a bunch of new forms that allows each player to have a more specialised damage type of attack. Also it is still possible later to add extra dmg bonus to offense to make its effect closer to critical severity.
But do you care enough to listen to other people's ideas? I believe not and I'm going to stop writing walls of texts on this thread because I'm facing a hero who superstatted way to much his EGO.
Comments
Here's a fun expiriment to see how much damage bonus you're actually getting out of your form
Step 1: Check a power's damage at 1 stack.
Step 2: Stack to 8 stacks.
Step 3: Check the same power's damage now (make sure no other bonuses are in effect)
You might be surprised just how little damage bonus you're getting per stack...which is because like most of us, you're currently so overloaded with damage bonuses that everything is diminished all to hell by the time it comes to your Form. For me, a 115% damage bonus turns into a wopping 13%. And no, that's not 13% per stack, that's 13% total.
That's another reason folks can afford to just stack Constitution... there's really no need to stack whatever stat your Form scales off of. It's also another reason for the shift in focus to Crit Severity, and why the point made about why sheer damage builds no longer exist is valid.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
I think his point is that the forms alone can take damage into DR territory, although IMO something's wrong with the system if it had to institute such steep DR that the numbers are so skewed in the first place.
And yes Con right now is stupidly good. I have no idea why it is not just a survivability stat, but an energy stat with Fuel My Fire and Defiance and Spirit Reverb, a DPS stat with Nimble Mind, and a healing stat with Adrenaline Rush and Resurgence as well. No other stat in the game is a one-stop shop for all your powerbuilding needs like Con is.
I know, and thats my whole point!
I'm gonna give you a set exemple with my archery toon
I have exactly :
- Stars : 15%
- Offensive Passive : 90%
- Superstats : 76%
- Offense : 13%
- Ranged Bonus : 29%
Total is 223% bonus base dmg + 100% original dmg = 323% bonus base dmg
I get an Extra 19% form each stack of focus wich gives me 152% bonus base dmg.
So my skills have a (475% base dmg x 1,25) +- returns, so anyways sinds you always take the base ammount of dmg from a skill it is normal the more bonus dmg you get because this value is partialy additive.
For instance, base damage from Snap Shot is 217 -> 271,25 (in Ranged Role)
If I use only my passive abilities (323% base dmg) snap shot should deal 876,1375 dmg but I get 805 dmg. I lost 8,11% of the base value dmg by going so far in DR.
If I now use both passives abilities and toggle (475% base dmg) snap shot should deal 1288,4375 dmg but I get 1002 instead because of heavy DR. I have lost 22,23% of my base dmg value scaling instead of 8,11% when i wasn't using any forms.
This shows that whenever you get past the 350% (includes 100% original value) dmg bonus cap, heavy DR are starting to kick in, while on the contrairy, below that 350% cap you will only have minor DR on your +dmg bonus.
Sinds defensive avatars are more likely not going to be affected by that cap, they will never suffer heavy DR from +dmg bonus, yes there will be minor DR but the dmg bonus value will never scale bellow 90% of the original dmg value of a skill.
Now for the offensive character it is a whole different story, offensive character easely reach the 350% cap the extra 146% of dmg bonus for me only gives me 32% of the actual base value of the skill. Those characters are the one hitted by heavy DR, because of that, defensive builds are superior to offensive builds because they have far more surviability and are getting greater numbers out of +dmg bonus compared to offensive builds, the only thing that matters in this case is the multiplicative value from roles, with an offensive role I get an extra 1.25 multiplicator but this and the extra additional dmg doesn't help when facing people capable of mitigating atleast 80% of the dmg dealt on them.
Finaly, my sugestion, if you change toggles to act like multiplicative values, like Mental Discipline does, offensive roles will get greater benefits from it because they will still easely get close to the 300% base dmg hardcap and not start to get heavy DR on the base dmg values while getting an extra multiplicative value from the toggles that will, this way, create a bigger balanced gap between Damage Dealers and Tanks.
This also means defensive builds won't easely get acces to +dmg value, and offense will becomme a very handy stat for them because it will allow those Tanks, willing to do so, to highly increase their base dmg bonus and this way to make offense "on par" with critical hits + severity depending on the build used.
Be aware that those change would conclude to an average decreased dps for Tanks and an minor decreased dps for Damage dealers. But I fundamentaly believe it is a change worth because PVP would be less about ganking people in a single hit and for PVE this could possibly make fights a bit longer and allow ennemies to actualy do something before they die, there is realy no reason to have 6000dps+ in this game when ennemies already melt down in seconds anyways.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
EDIT : I corrected the values by adding the extra ranged damage bonus I forgot earlier on my calculations. So it should now be OK to take those values into consideration!
Well, one part of your post is accurate.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me. Your position is much clearer now.
Basically, you are saying that if a character focuses on their constitution, then the survivability benefit they would obtain from juggernaut is significant enough to dwarf the benefit from any possible alternative. I have to try this out one day.
This alone would be bad, but the problem is compounded due to the fact that this tree also gives one of the better (or possibly the best) crit severity options. Due to diminishing returns to energy gain and damage, plus the availability crit strike enhancing gear, crit severity is now an optimal advantage to seek. I don't really know a lot about this, so unless someone more knowledgeable says otherwise, I'll take your word that this is all true.
Also, I thought that was an interesting thought you raised at the end. They need to make the strength tree optimal for most melee builds, but not as good for ranged builds as, say, the ego tree. But how do you do that without increasing the usefulness gap between ranged and melee?
It's not completely true. Based on the numbers provided in this thread, it looks like the OP is running AoPM, due to the claim that they can get 80% Damage Resistance from Defense and still get a 13% bonus from Form despite stacking Constitution, which does not scale with any Form.
This means apart from Primary Strength and Secondary Constitution, Smoochan's third superstat is very likely Intelligence, sitting at 340-350, since none of the other forms will give the 14% to ranged damage per stack necessary to hit 115% at 8 stacks. Doing some math, that would likely mean 410-420 Con, 190-200 Strength and 80-90 on the other stats.
Note that in the scenarios I listed in my previous post, none of them mentioned AoPM for a few reasons.
At 80-90 Ego, the gap between non-SS Ego Ranged Damage and a hypothetical primary SS Ego Ranged Damage with Ego at 190-200 is negligible.
At the same time, even without Energy Surge spam, AoPM and secondary Int make energy management a non-factor, negating Ego's Insight advantage.
Third, due to the nature of AoPM buffing stats, spec trees that give scaling bonuses based on stats will enjoy a relative advantage over other spec trees.
In other words, the gap between the Ego tree and the Strength tree is smallest on an AoPM build.
But even then, it is difficult to argue for Strength as a clear winner. Now that I have a clearer idea of the context, I also know the conditions necessary to make Ego come out ahead.
Since Ego's Insight spec covers Cost Discount and Ego powers Concentration, energy management is covered and Secondary Int is not necessary for an Ego character. Int and Insight have diminishing returns when stacked anyway, which led to the earlier claim of Insight being worthless - it is, but only on the wrong build
So the third stat is freed up for Secondary Dex. Stack that with Sixth Sense and use a Piercing primary offense to raise Crit Severity. This should narrow the gap between Crit Severity to 111% on Ego vs 120% on Strength, but the Ego character will have almost 49% crit chance with the Q secs or 55% with Vindicator, while the Strength character has 37% with a purple 47 crit sec, or 43% with Vindicator. Multiplying crit chance by crit multiplier to get relative DPS increase over no crits, we have:
Ego: 111% x 55% = 61.05%
Str: 120% x 43% = 51.6%
So the Ego character does more DPS.
Side note, the Strength character does not have the option of taking a Piercing primary, because most of its Crit comes from Crit Strike instead of Dex, and losing that Crit Strike will kill its Crit Chance.
Another note, at 55% Crit Chance, Exploit Opening will give more DPS than Sixth Sense, but the calculations involved are complicated enough for another thread, so I used Sixth Sense for simplicity's sake.
Last note, Crit Severity is nice, but because of the nature of the formula Crit Chance x Crit Severity, as well as the relatively smaller Crit Chance values vs Crit Severity, 1% Crit Chance is marginally more valuable than 1% Crit Severity. The exact value depends on your character's existing Crit% and Severity though.
I mentioned Q secs for the Ego build, because Force of Will will take Defense to well over 60%, which, stacked with the Armadillo secondaries, will beat the Strength build's 80% resistance cleanly. Strength does not have this option because it needs to pump everything into its secondary stats, which Armadillo provides little of.
As for stats, the Ego build should get 430-440 Con, 310-320 Dex, 230-240 Ego and 80-90 on the other stats. Slightly higher than the Str build because Ego Mastery gives more stats.
Comparing the two builds side by side, Str/Con/Int AoPM with purple secs wins in Knock Resist, ~200HP and Cooldown speed while Ego/Con/Dex AoPM with Armadillo secs wins in raw DPS by a healthy margin and damage mitigated by a smaller margin
No actually, all the numbers I gave are without AoPM. Now that you know that, take the numbers I gave, and throw AoPM on top of that.
I'm glad we agree on all these things. AoPM does in fact make the whole problem worse, but it's only a symptom, not the cause (keep in mind, the numbers I gave were without AoPM). Primary stat Strength is what allows AoPM to do what it currently does for ranged characters.
the Cost Discount spec is meaningless because energy generation isn't an issue. My 2GM character doesn't have the discount, and just uses Killer Instinct, and literally generates energy faster than I can use it. Taking Insight will not give an Ego-spec character anything over what a strength spec character has.
10% more dps is your reward for using a ranged stat on a ranged character. Does that seem okay to you? (don't answer until you read the next part)
It's simple enough to explain. Crit is easy enough to get from gear, and so crit chance specs just aren't as good as crit severity specs. Not sure why that's complicated enough that it had to muddy up the issue by using a less than optimal spec choice to prove an optimal conclusion. Doing this skews your numbers by a fair margin, and it almost makes it seem like you did that purposefully. Once we take that extra, unrealistic, amount of crit chance out of the equation, what happens here:
Ego: 111% x 55% = 61.05%
Str: 120% x 43% = 51.6%
Is that 10% extra dps still there once you adjust the numbers?
Again... "you have to stack con" is a demand without a drawback. The fact that another spec is going to have to farm for gear to make up the difference is telling enough on its own. Far as I remember, those Armadillo pieces give a 25% bonus... before cryptic math 60+25=85, but after cryptic math it's a different story. So, other specs have to farm for gear to almost make up the difference. Further, this only helps the concept that to build choices are being restricted when even gear becomes involved.
Your numbers are a bit skewed because of reasons I gave above, so these "margins" you're speaking of aren't accurate.
If all this were true, then you would have to explain why the number-crunching-maniacs who do all these calculations and make sure all their numbers are right and then prove their results in practice all end up using primary strength with their ranged aopm builds.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
We really have deviated from Smoochan's original topic, but to be honest, I'm finding this discussion on builds to be far more fascinating.
Maybe you could make it easier for us to understand and appreciate you build by telling us your third super stat, your passive, your form (if any).
Also, could you please clarify your point about 'Crit is easy enough to get from gear, and so crit chance specs just aren't as good as crit severity specs.... Doing this skews your numbers by a fair margin... take that extra, unrealistic, amount of crit chance out of the equation? (Note: I don't know how to insert multiple quotes, so I am forced to do it like this.)
First, could you explain why you believe that Selphea's build contains 'extra, unrealistic amount of crit chance'?
Do you believe that Selphea's estimation if flawed? If so, have you taken into how how sixth sense increases your crit chance - not your crit chance rating. As such, the bonus it provides is completely independent of dexterity and mods and does not suffer the usual diminishing returns. On my level 33 toon, it provides me with a 9% or 10% bonus to crit chance. (However, I have q gear, AoPM and have 3 ranks in it, so this number is unusually high.)
Alternatively, are arguing that Selphea's build would be superior if 5 points had been invested into increasing crit severity via follow through and exploit opening and the primary utility slot used to increase crit chance? Remember that Selphea's build uses dex as the third superstat, so crit chance rating items are probably going to suffer from hideous diminishing returns. If this is true, then shouldn't the DPS of ego be even higher?
Finally, yes the fact that you need Armadillo gear to (nearly) match juggernaut is a drawback. There is no getting around that. However, I would like to point out that this from the 11k/piece set. I can buy the full set of 6 for 300 - 400 zen, so a gold player doesn't necessarily have to farm for it. In fact, I've personally taken a likening to q gear, so for me, that would be as minor drawback as taking constitution as superstat is for you. (I been told that the nemesis heirloom gear is better, but haven't obtain enough tokens to check it out.)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you cannot hit 80% def with Juggernaut and 14% per Form stack without AoPM. Here's how I arrived at the breakdown:
14% per stack means secondary Int and a target of 340-350, so:
15 Base + Innate
18 Talents
40 Secondary SS
74 Secondaries
124 2 Rank 7 Int mods
70 AoPM
= 341 Int
And 80% def with Juggernaut means everything else went to Con, so:
15 Base + Innate
18 Talents
40 Secondary SS
20 Secondaries
248 4 Rank 7 Con mods
70 AoPM
= 411 Con
The only way for this to not hold true is if you were stacking Defense on your primary defense gear instead of Dodge/Avoid, which means more mods went to Int than Con. That means the contribution from Juggernaut is actually less impressive that you're leading us to believe, because it would actually be your gear giving you that Defense. In which case you're the one making sub-optimal choices.
I regard AoPM and Quarry as very broken passives post-On Alert. I don't think of the devs did a test scenario to compare the effects of stats with specs versus direct % boosting passives. The only thing keeping the DPS of direct % boosting passives competent is the option to run in DPS role instead of Hybrid, and that's by a very small margin. Quarry on the other hand is far and away the highest DPS passive for a ranged physical build, along with the one with the best defense due to its 18% dodge being a flat boost to dodge rather than dodge rating.
From my experience, it's not the main attack that gives me trouble, it's popping the extra cooldowns and debuffs between maintains to raise DPS, like throwing Dust Devil or Force Det between 2GMs.
The gap increases even further. I arrived at those numbers for Ego by taking 3 ranks of Follow Through (Crit Severity) for 100% base Severity and 2 Ranks of Sixth Sense for 7.5% Crit Chance. Then I added another 11% Severity from the Severity primary.
Since the spec choice in the Ego tree is your only contention, I'll do calculations for 3 ranks of Follow Through and 2 ranks of Exploit Opening for a definitive comparison:
Crit Chance x Crit Severity + Chance to not crit next hit x 30% Severity
= (47.5% + 111%) + (52.5% x 30% x 111%)
= 52% + 17.4825%
= 69.48%
So the difference is 17.88% with optimal specs on Ego. Since you didn't correct numbers on the Strength calculation, I'm going to assume my original numbers on that were correct.
The point is that other specs have the liberty to stack Con as well, and 85% > 80%, no matter if it's before or after Cryptic Math. Armadillo farming would be a legitimate point of contention, except it's only a 2-hour farm for arguably best-in-slot gear.
Primary Strength with AoPM is better for PvP due to the knock resist, but unless Cryptic regards PvP as more than a non-factor in this game, I'm going to regard PvP as a non-factor myself. Now, unless a "number-crunching-maniac" shows up here to prove me wrong, I personally have seen two ranged AoPM characters, and they both use primary Ego.
How do you get 33,000 questionite in only 2 hours?
Ah, I see the issue now, you think I have both that amount of defense, and that amount of damage bonus per stack. No, the 14% amount is when I heavily stack strength. It was done to illustrate the fact that if I go from very low strength to very high strength, the difference is somewhere around 5% more damage. That's not per stack by the way, that's the total difference at 8 stacks.
You're making a lot of assumptions about the type of character I play, and I assure you that the image you have in your head is way off. My suggestion would be to not focus on what I play... I'm not the only person playing this game after all, and this issue isn't something that only affects me.
I guess my vision of the game just extends further than yours. That's fine, but if you're going to purposely ignore entire portions of the game and only go by what builds you've personally seen, you can't really claim to be informed or open-minded. Lots of people use lots of different builds, that in itself doesn't prove there isn't a problem, it just means that there are many people experiencing the problem.
Actually it does matter... because of the two defense values you're adding together, one is before cryptic math, and one is after. You can't go by the sum of those two numbers, because it's not the number that is actually in play in the game.
And yes, other specs may also stack constitution, but the reality is they won't even be getting half the benefit they would with Strength spec. This would be okay, since ranged builds shouldn't have access to the same defense+offense benefits that melee have access to... but it's not, because they do.
They weren't correct, you're mistaken for assuming that.
Again, the effects of passives are a symptom, not the cause.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
That's because only half of it goes to ranged damage. There's no ranged Form that scales with strength.
I'm not so much making assumptions as I am trying to find a best-case scenario for Str-based ranged dps. If you feel I am not giving Str-based ranged dps a fair representation, why don't you show us how to build a Str-based ranged character?
As far as measuring build performance goes, I disregard portions of the game that do not serve a practical purpose. If PvP does not give rewards, then it is very difficult to justify PvP as a building goal for any reason other than personal enjoyment.
You can take CC and NTTG, Superstat for perception and knock resist, that's well and good, but it comes at the expense of what the game rewards you for, i.e. PvE. I make a lot of build choices for personal reasons myself, but I know full well these choices deviate from what the game tries to orient players towards, so I exclude them in debates about build performance.
That said, if you want to talk about a PvP context, you should state upfront that Strength tree with AoPM is overperforming for PvP, so that we get a better idea of where you're coming from and where this should be going.
60% + 25% with Armadillo is before Cryptic Math.
The 80% you provided is also before Cryptic Math, based on your earlier post on page 5:
So they're both before Cryptic Math. 85% is greater than 80% before Cryptic Math. After Cryptic Math it will not be 5%, but it will still be more.
That much I agree with, but Crit Severity is also a symptom. IMO the root of the problem is Cryptic Math.
Actually none of it goes to ranged... because the character in question has no ranged attacks. Like I said... your assumptions are getting in the way.
Str primary. Int/Con secondaries.
Stack constitution.
Form, Concentration.
Specs: Guardian, Vindicator
Result:
100%+ crit severity
30%+ crit chance
80%+ defense
12k+ hit points
enough offense that the damage bonus from Concentration is already heavily diminished, meaning you don't have to stack Int.
There's no big mystery to it. The above numbers don't account for a passive... so go ahead and throw aopm or quarry on top of that and see what happens.
So what if I then said that PvE doesn't matter because it's all stupidly easy anyway and there aren't any real rewards other than Z-store fluff?
fyi, the point I'm making here is you choosing not to acknowledge pvp as a meaningful part of the game is itself a meaningless point to make; you're not the only person playing this game.
I'm talking about Strength spec, as well as the passives that it causes to become too powerful, and the ways that it changes the dynamic of the game and sets requirements in place that shouldn't exist, in both the pve and pvp context, because I acknowledge both parts of the game as valid.
Fair enough. The problem is, that armadillo gear doesn't require you to take ego as a superstat, meaning it can't actually be counted as part of the build. The str spec could also equip those pieces of gear, so if you're going to add it to the ego spec's damage resistance, you have to add it to the str spec's as well.
Not really sure where you're going with this... cryptic math is essentially diminishing returns. Are you saying they should remove diminishing returns? That would require rebalancing the entire system from the ground up...and in the end, nothing would really change. I don't think such a "sweep of the hand" approach is the way to go; better to make a few precise changes.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Sure, any strength build could take armadilo - the question is whether your strength build would benefit from doing so.
You seem to have made it quite clear that stacking con is very important for your build. Armadilo armour provides a bonus to your primary superstat and about half of that to each of your secondary stats. Its great if you want balanced stats - as is desirable for the ego build - but less so if you want to pump a single secondary superstat. Is your ranged build still viable with this armou? (Note - this really is a question. I really don't know if your answer will be yes or no here.)
Notes:
The results are quite surprising in some respects.
First, Strength Crit Severity was a lot lower than I expected. Turns out the test character I used to get estimates for Strength earlier was using a Severity primary which threw my earlier numbers off.
Second, even at 34.3% base crit chance and almost everything pumped into Secondary stats, it was still more worthwhile to capitalize on Severity on the Ego build with a Severity primary and Exploit Opening for the most DPS. With Strength though, a Severity primary dropped DPS by a lot.
Third, I half expected the results of Ego with Armadillo vs Strength with purples, but I wasn't expecting the results with Strength wearing Armadillo gear. It does surprisingly well; gets 13.48% less DPS, but takes 12.86% less damage. That's almost on par with Ego, just with different orientations. It looks like the game does give you choices after all, just not quite in the expected way.
Ultimately, it doesn't change my initial assessment that the Strength build works better for PvP and Ego for PvE. 12.7k HP and 83% resistance is plenty survivable and the extra DPS gets things done faster. After it was clarified that 80% resistance was before AoPM, I knew Ego would fall behind in Damage Resistance, even with Armadillo. But I also didn't know it would pull so far ahead in DPS.
These results will likely change in favor of Strength when Legion gear and R7-9 mods are taken into account. I think it's still too close to call, because while Ego will fall further behind in resistance, its 13.48% DPS advantage is largely based on crits. This would apply to crittable heals like the ever-popular Conviction too. So defensively, as long as it can heal, it will be able to keep up.
Now for what I mean by Cryptic Math being the problem, I'm saying that because I have a very strong hunch that even the devs get confused by it. It's not just diminishing returns, but a complete lack of uniformity in the application of DR. Some things give a flat bonus. Some things give a Cryptic Math percentage before it gets translated into a flat bonus. Yet other things give a rating subject to DR that gets translated to Cryptic Math percentage that then gets translated into the final bonus, by which point it has diminished into nothing.
Offense is one such stat. Look at the secondary gear. A crit Secondary Offense gives 17 Offense and 47 Crit Strike. An offensive Secondary Offense gives 25 Offense. So 8 Offense = 47 Crit Strike? 8 Offense is nowhere near even 1% actual damage.
And then we have Way of the Warrior and Quarry. Way of the Warrior gives Dodge Rating and Avoidance Rating, which are subject to DR. Quarry gives flat Dodge and Avoidance. Sure, Way of the Warrior gives more damage, but that damage is also subject to DR. After accounting for DR, that advantage is almost negligible.
So we get a game of hunting for what is not subject to DR, or subject to less DR. Even though there's so many powers and gear and spec choices in the game, builds get railroaded into a very narrow range of options because everything else leads to a dead end. Separating Crit Severity would actually make this worse, because right now there is a semblance of choice between Str and Ego. In fact, there are melee builds that use Primary Ego too, to maximize crit chance for landing crit Gas Pellets. I personally don't have any characters using Primary Ego right now though.
Wow, those are some interesting findings! Thank you for doing this.
Given that sixth sense is based on your secondary superstats, I would have assumed that would have been best, no question, especially with a crit rate in the mid-30s. I going to have to think about taking exploit opening more.
I think that you've shown that you can make a ranged ego build competitive with a ranged strength build. At the same time however, you have also shown that strength - which is clearly designed for melee - can be as competitive an option for ranged characters as the ranged tree option! Still, at least I know that if I have a melee character, I can design it so that it doesn't suck at ranged. This has all been very enlightening.
Actually when I did my Exploit Opening calculator, I realized I missed out a crit chance multiplier in there. Instead of calculating Exploit Opening only for non-crits after a crit, it was calculating for all non-crits. But I'll wait to see if my calculator works before I look at this again, because I don't want to do manual calculations a second time. In the meantime, you can help me test it at http://worldsojourner.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/champions-online-exploit-opening-calculator-beta/
Thank you for your contribution. Now go shave your sideburns off, disco is dead.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Well done. Now make an Ego build for a melee character. Since it's okay that ranged characters can benefit so massively from strength, it should work the other way around too, right?
I'd also be interested to see you test your ego build against the standard strength/aopm setup in pvp, and see afterwards if you still feel as viable as your spreadsheet says you should be.
Then do it as a melee.
I'll give you one thing... you're willing to take on the role of someone who thinks the game is well balanced, and that shows guts.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Why do you guys need to do so much calculation? :P
Anyway, I think critical severity is fine the way it is. Uncapping offense would be overpowered. Some of you guys have nukes and you want more power! hehe
All ears here...anything?
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Just think of what happens if you really change how severity works.
Take a deep breath, stay calm, then eventually start posting.
I see people comparing offense to severity... i mean hello? offense is
the 4th super stat, nothing even close being compared to severity, at all.
Then all the blubb-blubb about ranged attacks gaining dmg from strength
as their ss...
The real problem is not a silly stat such as severity... Incompetent players, who
cannot adapt their own playstyle to new game mechanics are.
Once again, what is your problem at all? Pop some screenies, or maybe a video.
Oh aaaand about my burns, i cannot shave them since i am bald at the moment. :eek:
seeya.
do you mean this idea bellow?
People have nicely, at least most of them, explained to you why they think your idea sucks, and I also believe so. Because it would ask a lot of the devs time to actualy make those changes in game. By changing that particular variable you basicaly ask to have 3 new types of critical severity stats in game instead of 1. You are overcomplicating things while you could just keep it simple and change other things that are easier to fix.
I also posted an idea, and you took me like a 6 year old child who never did any caclulation in his life and completely ignored the post that followed later on. I have a question for you: Have you ever tried an ID blade offensive build by alternating both Mental Discipline and one of the current forms? You would be surprised to see how close those are in DPS.
Also part of your argumentation was that offense was not strong enough. My idea make sure offense actualy do something instead of beeing an extra number affected by heavy DR. Ok, maybe it still doesn't put on par offense with crit severity yet but still it is one step closer to balance the whole thing and it is an easier change to make, copy past Mental Discipline, change the damage type variable and its special synergy and "voila!" you get a bunch of new forms that allows each player to have a more specialised damage type of attack. Also it is still possible later to add extra dmg bonus to offense to make its effect closer to critical severity.
But do you care enough to listen to other people's ideas? I believe not and I'm going to stop writing walls of texts on this thread because I'm facing a hero who superstatted way to much his EGO.